Seventh Annual BMW Tennis Championship
The BMW Tennis Championship is a men’s professional tennis tournament on the ATP Men’s Tour. The 32-player singles draw is among the most competitive on the tour and is loaded with Top 50 players. This year’s entry list had 13 Top 50 players; equally impressive is that the lowest ranked player on the entry list would have been among the top eight seeded players at many other ATP Tour stops.
I handle public relations for this tennis championship. While we lightly invested time in Social Media during the 2009 tournament, we took it on full force for 2010 and the results were astounding.
Our Twitter and our Facebook Fan Page were activated to build up excitement leading up to the tournament and provided real time updates during tournament week with match schedules and results. Social Media proved very useful during a short rain delay when fans were wondering if the day matches were being postponed and to when. Fans knew to wait for our “all clear, rain is gone” tweet or Fan Page update to head over to the courts. The media also found these updates very useful. Another example of the value of Social Media was that it enabled us to have two-way communications with our followers regarding a technical issue with the live scoring feature on our wesbite.
Even after the completion of the tournament, both our Twitter and Facebook platforms are used to inform our fans and followers on how our tournament participants are performing on the tour as three champions of recent ATP Tour events played at the 2010 BMW Tennis Championship.
Social Media was a primary vehicle for certain event promotions such as the Association for Women in Communications, South Florida networker that was hosted during one of our evening sessions. We also partnered with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for a register to win VIP tickets promotion.
Additional valuable platforms utilized were YouTube and 12 seconds. We provided fans exclusive behind the scenes views on both offerings. Content included a look into how a player spends spare time pre and post match in the “players only” lounge. We also created short videos that were available via YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the tournament website. One daily program titled “Three with Me” featured interviews with players, tournament officials and sponsors. Another video series titled “Two with You” showcased the fans, their excitement and a quick cheer for their favorite player.
Fans worldwide chimed in to cheer for their favorite player when we posted the match results and images on Facebook. Our media staff was versed in multiple languages allowing us to post and reply in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch.
Social Media helped us bring the event to everyone who couldn’t attend – from fans at work during the day sessions to fans on opposite sides of the globe. We’re already preparing for an even bigger tournament with much more online interaction in March 2011!
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Our inaugural Visiting Rhino, Agustina Prigoshin (@AgustinaP) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and raised in Miami. In college, she studied Psychology, Medicine and finally stuck with Journalism; only to graduate and explore the world of Public Relations. That’s her favorite part of life: you never know where you’ll end up so just make the most of every situation, but always make sure you’re having fun.
If you’re interested in being a Visiting Rhino and have a social media and sports story to share, please email us at
